Amazon Reportedly Cancels Lord of the Rings MMO - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 November 2025 / 5,592 Views
Amazon's The Lord of the Rings MMO has reportedly been cancelled, according to former senior gameplay engineer at Amazon Games Ashleigh Amrine in a now deleted LinkedIn post spotted by Rock Payer Shotgun.
"This morning I was part of the layoffs at Amazon Games, alongside my incredibly talented peers on New World and our fledgling Lord of the Rings game (y'all would have loved it)," said Amrine.
"It's always tough to see such a strong team go through something like this. I've been lucky to work with some of the most skilled, creative, and kind developers I've ever met here."
The Lord of the Rings MMO was announced in May 2023 as Amazon Games had signed an agreement with Embracer Group subsidiary Middle-earth Enterprises. The MMO was in development by New World studio Amazon Games Orange County for consoles and PC.
The game would have been "an open-world MMO adventure in a persistent world set in Middle-earth" and feature the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings literary trilogy.
It was reported earlier this week that Amazon is laying off 14,000 corporate jobs that includes "significant" cuts to its video game business.
Amazon Games has officially confirmed it is ending development on its MMORPG, New World. The recently released Season 10 and Nighthaven update is the final content release, and servers are currently planned to remain online through 2026.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Doesn't seem like a great time to make an MMO, but I really want to see somebody (not amazon) make a good LotR RPG someday. There's just too much potential there.
It's such a flexible property. They can go smaller scale and make some great titles if they can resist tech's "macro-success-at-all-costs" mantra.
I don't think anyone will do better than Lotro.
i enjoyed the third age rpg on gamecube
Reportedly? They've basically fired everyone in their games division. Of course it's cancelled!
Well that's what happens when you fire most of the game staff.
I would, in fact, not have loved a Lord of the Rings MMO.
Lotr have a MMO since 2007.
Hope they start from scratch and we get something well done :-)
